7
Julia
Two days in and my rash decision to stay with Shemesh-Tek may have been … well, rash.
In Nathaniel’s defense, he had warned me. Their secret contract was infinitely more complicated than anything I had ever worked on and the days have been relentless. The team works an average of ten hours—on a good day. Trying to make heads or tails of the documents delivery schedule has been a disaster. The engineers have done their best, but they were too busy designing the actual product to care about things like deliverables—documents for the customer to track our progress. There is no unified folder structure. The contract calendar was completely out-of-date and off-track. I’m doing my best to fix the schedule, but everything will stay behind until progress with testing is made.
With all the extra hours spent at work, I haven’t had time to go take care of myself since my last visit to the abandoned factory. I should have been okay for at least another few weeks, but instead I have the ill health and twitchiness as though it’s been a month or more instead of mid-cycle. I’m drained these days. The pain thrums through my body at work. The stress of this job and the developing crush on Nathaniel has meant I’m constantly battling my own body for control. By the end of every day, I’m exhausted, achy, and on the verge of a migraine.
The only silver lining is that I’ve been so busy, I’ve not had time to dwell on my superfluous feelings for Nathaniel. If I pass him in the hall on our way to different meetings, we wave politely. In the meetings we do have together, I keep my focus completely clamped on whoever is speaking. Unless it is him, in which case I doodle dances to try out in my now very limited free time. I don’t pay attention to how he commands the room. I don’t make note of how he has the respect of every member on the team. I especially don’t bask in the sunshine of his eternal optimism.
Nope. These feelings are totally under control.
“Can you make the meeting this morning?” Nathaniel’s head pops into my office. It’s as though my dreamy thoughts conjured him. He’s half in, half out, his long legs already heading toward his next destination as he hugs the doorframe as though to keep his bottom half from leaving without him. He’s in dark jeans and a forest green henley for casual Friday that makes his eyes even more captivating.
I sit up straighter and then force myself into a relaxed position. I ignore the instant pulse of excitement that just seeing him causes. I tuck my hands in my lap.
“Hi. Good morning,” I say.
His mouth cocks into a half-grin. “Good morning, Julia. Sorry.” He lowers his head for a moment to show his remorse at being so abrupt. I get it. This whole contract is just constant sprinting. When he looks back up at me through his dark lashes my heart stutters.
“How are you?” he asks.
Gah. I smile. “I’m fine,” I lie.
I glance to my screen. I really have way too much work to do to make this meeting. I haven’t even had a chance to eat more than a few nuts and some coffee all day. But yet he waits, obviously eager for my answer.
“And how are you?” I ask to purposely mess with him. He’s like a hummingbird flitting from office to office, all but hovering off the ground with restless energy.
“Good. There will be doughnuts,” he adds. “At the meeting.”
“Hmm. You drive a hard bargain.”
“Blatant bribery. We all need a little break.”
For a fraction of a second, the world spins as we share a smile. Our smiles don’t have to mean anything. I wish the tingles spreading down my neck would get the memo.
“I’ll be there,” I tell him, finally releasing him from this shared moment to zip to the next destination.
“Good.” He blinks and shakes his head with a goofy grin. “Okay. See ya.”
He’s off again in a flash of movement. That’s the thing about Nathaniel—he never settles. Never sits still. Always shaking or jiggling a leg, tossing a stress ball, pacing the room, or bobbing his head to the techno music pumping from his headphones. He’s a perpetual motion machine.
I finish and save my current task with a sigh, then lock my computer. The whole team is already gathered in the small meeting room except Nathaniel. Kate and Febin face the door. Dylan types on their laptop without looking up. Jared gives me a small wave as I make my way to the other side of the room. I smile back but I keep my head down as I settle into a chair against the wall. I’m not a key person and try to leave the chairs around the table for the core team.
Most people take notes during meetings on their laptops but I find something simple and pleasing about writing my notes in an actual notebook. It’s also how I track my symptoms. I use a code nobody would understand, but it helps to visually see the impact of my illness.
I track the last few days of my symptoms now as the engineers use acronyms to discuss things I don’t understand.
“Nathaniel can’t figure it out either,” Febin says to Kate.
“We’ve factored in everything. There’s no explanation for why they’ve started failing,” says Kate. There’s an edge to her voice that has me glancing up.
Before I can tease out a reason for her tone, Nathaniel walks in. No, that’s not right. Nathaniel doesn’t just walk into a room. He always seems to hop, skip, slide, or lope. There needs to be a word for the energy he brings with him everywhere he goes. Everybody sits up straighter with a smile. They lean in like sunflowers toward the sun. I get it.
“Hey folks,” he says as he moves to the center chair, setting up his laptop to share his screen.
They greet their hellos before falling into a discussion of the possibility about crossover between the different MCU characters. I’m tempted to share fake spoilers to mess with Dylan. I bite back a mischievous smile as I doodle in the margins of my notebook.
